PTSD – A Way Out.com A mindful way to heal

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EKMAN: Thank you very much for asking me to define emotions. (Laughs.) As you might expect, I have written about this, proposing that there are a number of characteristics that distinguish emotions from other mental states.
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One is that most emotions have a signal. That is, they let others know what’s happening inside us, unlike thoughts, for which there is not a distinctive signal for the various thoughts people have.
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You do not know whether I just thought about my mother, who has been dead for more than fifty years, or what I am thinking now.
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When people find out that I study facial expression, they often get very uncomfortable, saying, “You are reading my mind.” I say,
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“No, I can only read your emotions.” I cannot tell from the signal what caused the emotion.
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If I see a fear expression, I know that you perceive a threat.
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But the fear of being disbelieved looks just like the fear of being caught.
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Recognizing that is important in police work. If a suspect looks afraid, that does not tell you that he or she committed the crime. Maybe, but maybe not. That was Othello’s error.
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He thought his wife Desdemona’s look of fear was the fear of a woman caught in infidelity. But it was a wife’s fear of her jealous husband, who had just killed someone he thought was her lover:
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She should have been afraid.
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Emotions have a signal—this is one characteristic—unlike thoughts, unlike ideas. But there are exceptions.
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.continued…
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